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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992689">Mineralogy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn'>alamorn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Caves, F/F, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:21:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992689</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something Gyre needs to do before they go looking for her mother.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Em Arasgain/Gyre Price</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fandom Couch 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mineralogy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts">anticyclone</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Putting the suit on wasn't as bad as Gyre had been afraid. She'd had nightmares for the week leading up to it, bad enough that they'd been hard to hide from Em, but once she was in it, it was fine. It actually made the prosthetic bother her less; in the suit, she couldn't see that her arms didn't match, and the dulled, unreal sensation was the same between her prosthetic and her flesh and bone hand. </p>
<p>She flexed the fingers of both hands, twisted from side to side. "It's light," she said, and Em half-smiled.</p>
<p>"I thought you might like that. It's a new alloy. Didn't want to sacrifice strength, but... a dead battery shouldn't be a death sentence." </p>
<p>Gyre took a deep, reflexive breath. The faceplate was open, and even if it weren't, they were topside, her batteries full, standing in the middle of Em's R&amp;D, not under miles of stone, Em cutting off her breath to get just enough power to move her legs. Em watched her breathe, and didn't even flinch. "Good call," Gyre said. "So? When do I get to try it out for real?"</p>
<p>"I'm not sending you into a real cave," Em said, in a tone of voice that was difficult, though not impossible, for Gyre to argue with. She knew Gyre well enough not to give her the chance, continuing quickly with, "I found a pseudo-cave that needs mapping. I think you'll like it."</p>
<p>Em grabbed her tablet and brought up some pictures, some data, and handed it over to Gyre. The touch screen didn't work with the suit, but the tablet tracked her eye motion and it only took a few accidental page-turns before she figured it out.</p>
<p>"It's beautiful," she said, and it was. Crystals spilled in every direction, long and jagged and criss-crossing, weaving so thickly together that she could see why it hadn't yet been mapped. She wondered at the scale of the crystals. In the picture they looked small, but she knew how misleading pictures could be. The scale of caves was always greater than the expectation.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The mouth of the psuedo-cave was narrow enough that Gyre would have missed it without the GPS marker inside her faceplate, and the first descent was claustrophobically narrow, with bare inches on each side of her as she crawled down.</p>
<p>Em's voice in her helmet was almost comforting, almost enough to throw her into a panic. "The crystals don't play well with the reconstruction. The light will be the way to go."</p>
<p>"I don't think the crystals will play well with anything," Gyre said, happy to talk and let her body work on auto-pilot as she remembered the rhythm of climbing. </p>
<p>It was almost a thousand feet down, the way twisting and steep but not sheer. She placed anchors and ran her rope, but she could climb it if her rope broke. That was reassuring. So too were the extra batteries waiting on her back.</p>
<p>And then, before she knew it, the walls of the pseudo-cave dropped away and the reconstruction went wild. "Switching to headlamp," she said, taking some comfort in telling Em, knowing that if she froze, Em would know what to do on her behalf.</p>
<p>In the light of the headlamp, the cave glittered like the inside of a geode. Columns of crystal twenty feet and longer criss-crossed in every direction, with barely enough room between them for the air.</p>
<p>"Wow," she breathed. "You seeing this?"</p>
<p>"I see it," Em said.</p>
<p>"I thought diamonds were traditional," Gyre said without thinking, starting to pick her way around the base of the closest crystal. It was wider around than her arms, wider enough that it would take three or four people to ring it, hand in hand. When she realized what she'd said, she bit her tongue. Things with Em were complicated, and new, and... Gyre did, actually, want to spend her life with her.</p>
<p>Em chuckled, low and amused. "The suit wasn't good enough?"</p>
<p>"The suit was reparations," Gyre said. She stopped, hands on hips, surveying the glittering expanse. It left her very near to breathless. She didn't think she'd ever seen anything quite so beautiful. "This is something else."</p>
<p>"If we're getting married," Em said, and said it in such a way that <em>if</em> sounded like <em>when</em>, "I think we should tell your mother."</p>
<p>And that was just like Em, an attack that Gyre had no guard for. She grunted and started to move again, cutting across the space as directly as she could, searching for the wall. Mapping might be an excuse manufactured to test out the new suit in a low risk setting, but Gyre still had her pride, would still do the job right. She used to the time to figure out what she was going to say.</p>
<p>Since her recovery, Em had made it clear that she still had two tickets ready to go whenever Gyre was, and Gyre had made excuse after excuse. She hadn't wanted to face her mother before she got used to the prosthetic, hadn't wanted to be any less than her best.</p>
<p>Once she completed the ascent, she wouldn't be able to argue that she wasn't anymore. It had been a consideration since the moment Em had proposed the climb, but Gyre had been stir-crazy and incapable of resisting. And Em was right, much as Gyre hated to admit it. She'd faced so much more than just one woman. It was time to stop letting fear hold her back.</p>
<p>"Fine," she said, shimmying over another crystal, the surface slick enough that her suit had trouble with grip. It was nothing compared to climbing a waterfall, though, so she didn't really have an excuse for how short she sounded.</p>
<p>"Are you sure?" Em asked, the curious solicitousness that came when she thought she'd pushed too hard when she didn't need to.</p>
<p>"It's only fair," Gyre said. "Can't go worse than meeting yours."</p>
<p>Em breathed out a pained laugh. "I suppose not."</p>
<p>If they lingered, she might rethink things. Or go mad and try to find her way to the depths of the earth. So Gyre waited a deliberate moment and changed the subject. "I do also want a ring."</p>
<p>"Greedy," Em said, but not disapprovingly.</p>
<p>Gyre grinned at the crystals, the way the light from her headlamp bounced within them. The suits reading showed that the outside temperature was far beyond sweltering, but the gel was cool against her skin. "You're mine. I want proof."</p>
<p>"I will drape you in jewels," Em said, her voice too soft and intimate to be called heated, too charged to be anything else. "And when I take you off-world, everyone will look at you and know that you are loved."</p>
<p>Goosebumps flared up inside her suit despite the careful climate control. She released a shuddering breath, so Em would know how affected she was. "Promises, promises," she said. <em>Everyone</em>, Em had said, and <em>loved</em>. It was almost as comfortingly claustrophobic as sliding into a crevasse, narrow enough that her suit scraped the sides. Em had offered her out after out, while she'd built the prosthetic and the new suit, and now she was promising to pursue Gyre with the intensity that she had pursued her parents ghosts.</p>
<p>If Gyre hadn't left half her mind in the cave, she probably would have found that terrifying. As it was, it was reassuring.</p>
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